Packing for Paris

I had not expected Wally to set the two airline tickets down beside my plate at the dinner table; I grabbed them and held them close to my heart. In just three weeks David, 13, and I would fly off to Germany. It was a frantic time.

I broke the news to my boss at the real estate office. She told me to go ahead, but I would get only a small part of any commissions on sales made to my clients while I was gone. I might lose several thousand dollars. But my job would wait until David and I returned.

For three weeks David and I would travel around Europe, visit my older son, Karl, stationed with the U.S. Army in Frankfurt, and tour Germany, Austria, and France. At last I was going to Paris! Romantic Paris with a thirteen-year-old kid. Not the way I’d dreamed about it. Married to Wally for more than 20 years, I learned to compromise and enjoy whatever I did.

I drove to the bank to take David’s birth certificate out of the safety deposit box. At the post office I applied for a passport for David Christian Gaarsoe. (I had mine from our trip to Iceland and Denmark two years before.) I wrote to Karl (in those days we didn’t phone overseas) telling him when we would arrive and asking him to reserve for a place for David and me to stay near where he was stationed.

Working like crazy at home and at work, the only other advance preparation I did was to send for some pamphlets on Germany. I also went to the local AAA office and reserved a rental car to be picked up at the Frankfurt Airport.

A couple of days before we were to leave, David’s passport arrived with his name misspelled, “David Christina Gaarsoe.” He said with injured pride, “I am not Christina.” I said, “We don’t have time to get it changed.”

I was still showing houses to prospective clients. One night I stayed up until midnight doing laundry, taking clothes out of the drier and putting them directly into suitcases. Somehow I pulled it off. Wally took us to the airport, and we flew off over the Atlantic. I was so excited I could not sleep in the cramped seat on the long, overnight flight.

Groggy and fatigued, we got off the plane. It was 2:00 a.m. in Chicago, l0:00 a.m. in Frankfurt, Germany. David and I went to the rental car counter, where I filled out forms. We were shown to a tiny Opal. We stuffed the luggage into the back of the car and climbed in with barely enough room to wedge myself behind the steering wheel.

I had not driven a stick shift in 20 years. I put my right foot on the brake, my left foot on the clutch, and the key in the ignition. I let out the clutch. And killed the engine. I turned the key again, put in the clutch, moved the gear shift down into first gear, slowly let out the clutch, moved my right foot from brake to accelerator – and killed the engine again. Four more times I tried and killed the engine every time. I thought, “I’m going to spend the next three weeks in this parking lot!”

On the seventh try, I got the car going. I eased out of the parking lot and immediately drove onto the autobahn. Mercedes and BMW’s whizzed past going 130 miles per hour. I floor-boarded the Opal. It wouldn’t go over 80. David and I were on our way into downtown Frankfurt, Germany.